Pop and Jazz in Review

By JON PARELES

Published: April 23, 1992

Cranes and Belly Limelight

A woman who sings and three men on drums and guitars: that was the lineup for both Cranes and Belly, bands that performed Tuesday night. The two bands also share a basic musical strategy; in their songs, a serene, girlish vocal is swathed in noise. Sometimes the singing grows harsher to match the swelling chaos; sometimes it remains lost in its own reverie. Either way, the performers show little emotion, staying calm and deadpan, barely moving to the beat.

Yet the two bands were utterly distinct. Cranes, an English band, chose discord and primitivism. The songs were slow and deliberate, with a basic drumbeat and just two or three chords. The music was guitar-driven, but some songs added a repeating piano riff, a Minimalist handful of notes. Alison Shaw, on bass, sang in a mewling, childish wisp of a voice, her words so vague and whispery they were largely indecipherable, as they are on the band's album, "Wings of Joy" (Dedicated/B.M.G.).

A few songs used their stately tempos and keyboard sounds to build a rough-hewn grandeur. But sooner or later the noise would swell, a looming wave of guitar distortion and sourceless squall, buffeting but never toppling Ms. Shaw's voice. Cranes' music could be the sound of a lone innocent holding her own within a pitiless universe,

In Belly, noise provides more muscle for Tanya Donelly, the band's singer, guitarist and leader. Her voice is clear, working its way at times to an angry rasp or a Sinead O'Connor leap, while her lyrics seemed to be about troubled sleep and tense romances. One song asked "Don't you have someone you'd die for?"

Ms. Donelly, formerly of Throwing Muses, writes songs that seem to take shape along the way; although she wrote only a small part of Throwing Muses' repertory, she has plenty of strong material. Where most rock songs would repeat, hers expand or mutate, bringing in new material or changing meter, as if the old walls of structure had dissolved; she writes waltzes as well as standard 4/4 rockers, and some of the songs have a country bounce. Belly plays harder than Throwing Muses did, using power chords, a pounding beat and concentrated drones, while Ms. Donelly easily commands her way through the turbulence.